By Mahmoud Mourad and Yara Bayoumy
CAIRO (Reuters) - In his battle against militant Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is relying not just on bomber planes and soldiers but on white-turbaned clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt's 1,000-year-old centre for Islamic learning. He wants clerics to counter radicalism in the classroom.
In a televised speech in January at an Al-Azhar conference centre in Cairo, Sisi called for "a religious revolution" in Islam. Radicalised thinking, he told the audience of Islamic scholars, had become "a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world."
That had to change – and the scholars had a leading role to play, in schools, mosques and on the airwaves.
"You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting. The entire world is waiting for your next word because this nation is being torn apart."
Surprised by the president's bluntness, the scholars went "white as sheets," some of those in the audience told a Western official.
The president's warning is part of a much larger project. To contain the radical Islamist movement roiling his nation, Sisi has most conspicuously been using the law and brute force. But he is also promoting a more moderate and less politicised version of the faith.
In that struggle the Al-Azhar institution is one of the most important fronts for Sisi – and for the wider region. The outcome of the struggle in Egypt, the intellectual and cultural capital of the Arab world, has ramifications far beyond its borders.
The Al-Azhar mosque was built in the 10th century and is one of the oldest in Egypt. It opened a university that spread Shi'ite Islam until the end of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171. It later turned into a Sunni mosque and university that taught the four schools of mainstream Sunni Islam.
Today the university's various faculties and research centres have 450,000 students, many from countries across Asia and Africa. It also has a network of more than 9,000 schools across Egypt attended by more than 2 million students.
Al-Azhar's teachers, preachers, and researchers have so far introduced a few small changes. They include tweaking text books and setting up an online monitoring centre to track militant statements on social media so the institute can better refute them. But there is no detailed reform programme yet, and Al-Azhar officials openly acknowledge the magnitude of the challenge ahead.
To be successful, Sisi will need to achieve what many before him have not: balancing tough security measures with education to encourage a more moderate version of Islam. Past experiences in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Iraq show that attempts to crack down on extremism can also stoke it. So far the results of Sisi's drive have been mixed.
The president is deeply religious and has a mark on his forehead from years of pressing his head to the carpet in daily prayer. His wife and daughter wear the veil. His reputation for piety was so well known that his predecessor, Mohamed Mursi, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's first freely-elected president, appointed him army chief in August 2012.
Yet Sisi was also bold enough to seize power from Mursi after the Brotherhood leader became increasingly unpopular. Since then, he has cracked down hard on the Brotherhood. Hundreds of the group's supporters have been killed, and thousands jailed. This month a Cairo court recommended the death sentence for Mursi in connection with a mass jail break in 2011.
Balancing that sort of force with a message of moderation is difficult. Some students at Al-Azhar say they are deeply sceptical of the institution, and of the government's plans. Many dismiss Al-Azhar as a mouthpiece for the state, which favours the military and political elites over the poor masses where militants find most of their recruits.
Some students told Reuters the security crackdown was counterproductive. Cairo's heavy-handed tactics, they say, are radicalising people who may have been open to a message of moderation.
Western officials praise Sisi's calls for action but question whether he has any real plan. "There's a kernel of a very big idea in what Sisi wants to do," said one. "But his vision of it is not exactly clear and it's not clear how it will be implemented."
MODERNISING TEXTS
Critics say Al-Azhar's Grand Imams have long issued religious edicts in support of government policy. During the time of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president for three decades until his overthrow in 2011, the Grand Imam was appointed by presidential decree.
The military government that took over from Mubarak gave Al-Azhar more independence. It allowed an Al-Azhar committee to elect the Grand Imam, though the winner still had to be ratified by presidential decree.
When Mursi ca
By Mahmoud Mourad and Yara Bayoumy
CAIRO (Reuters) - In his battle against militant Islam, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is relying not just on bomber planes and soldiers but on white-turbaned clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt's 1,000-year-old centre for Islamic learning. He wants clerics to counter radicalism in the classroom.
In a televised speech in January at an Al-Azhar conference centre in Cairo, Sisi called for "a religious revolution" in Islam. Radicalised thinking, he told the audience of Islamic scholars, had become "a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world."
That had to change – and the scholars had a leading role to play, in schools, mosques and on the airwaves.
"You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting. The entire world is waiting for your next word because this nation is being torn apart."
Surprised by the president's bluntness, the scholars went "white as sheets," some of those in the audience told a Western official.
The president's warning is part of a much larger project. To contain the radical Islamist movement roiling his nation, Sisi has most conspicuously been using the law and brute force. But he is also promoting a more moderate and less politicised version of the faith.
In that struggle the Al-Azhar institution is one of the most important fronts for Sisi – and for the wider region. The outcome of the struggle in Egypt, the intellectual and cultural capital of the Arab world, has ramifications far beyond its borders.
The Al-Azhar mosque was built in the 10th century and is one of the oldest in Egypt. It opened a university that spread Shi'ite Islam until the end of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171. It later turned into a Sunni mosque and university that taught the four schools of mainstream Sunni Islam.
Today the university's various faculties and research centres have 450,000 students, many from countries across Asia and Africa. It also has a network of more than 9,000 schools across Egypt attended by more than 2 million students.
Al-Azhar's teachers, preachers, and researchers have so far introduced a few small changes. They include tweaking text books and setting up an online monitoring centre to track militant statements on social media so the institute can better refute them. But there is no detailed reform programme yet, and Al-Azhar officials openly acknowledge the magnitude of the challenge ahead.
To be successful, Sisi will need to achieve what many before him have not: balancing tough security measures with education to encourage a more moderate version of Islam. Past experiences in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Iraq show that attempts to crack down on extremism can also stoke it. So far the results of Sisi's drive have been mixed.
The president is deeply religious and has a mark on his forehead from years of pressing his head to the carpet in daily prayer. His wife and daughter wear the veil. His reputation for piety was so well known that his predecessor, Mohamed Mursi, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's first freely-elected president, appointed him army chief in August 2012.
Yet Sisi was also bold enough to seize power from Mursi after the Brotherhood leader became increasingly unpopular. Since then, he has cracked down hard on the Brotherhood. Hundreds of the group's supporters have been killed, and thousands jailed. This month a Cairo court recommended the death sentence for Mursi in connection with a mass jail break in 2011.
Balancing that sort of force with a message of moderation is difficult. Some students at Al-Azhar say they are deeply sceptical of the institution, and of the government's plans. Many dismiss Al-Azhar as a mouthpiece for the state, which favours the military and political elites over the poor masses where militants find most of their recruits.
Some students told Reuters the security crackdown was counterproductive. Cairo's heavy-handed tactics, they say, are radicalising people who may have been open to a message of moderation.
Western officials praise Sisi's calls for action but question whether he has any real plan. "There's a kernel of a very big idea in what Sisi wants to do," said one. "But his vision of it is not exactly clear and it's not clear how it will be implemented."
MODERNISING TEXTS
Critics say Al-Azhar's Grand Imams have long issued religious edicts in support of government policy. During the time of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's president for three decades until his overthrow in 2011, the Grand Imam was appointed by presidential decree.
The military government that took over from Mubarak gave Al-Azhar more independence. It allowed an Al-Azhar committee to elect the Grand Imam, though the winner still had to be ratified by presidential decree.
When Mursi cats such as "Honesty in faith is not complete without jihad for the sake of God." More moderate Islamic scholars have criticised such statements because they lack any context for when jihad is justified.
Bookshop owners said that they even quietly sell books by Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian Brotherhood leader in the middle of last century who is widely seen as the father of modern radical Islamist ideology.
DOWNSIDE OF TOUGH ACTION
The security crackdown may be undermining the attempted education reforms, hardening the outlook of students already sympathetic to Islamists and ostracising some moderates.
Take the 18-year-old Al-Azhar student who goes by the nickname Abu Obeida al-Ansari. The teenager attended Al-Azhar schools from his early years. Two years ago he joined protests in Cairo against Sisi. The protesters were angry about the fierce security crackdown that killed scores of Brotherhood members and sympathisers. The teenager was later arrested, he said, for standing next to a Brotherhood member in the street as security forces closed in.
Ansari told Reuters via Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) that Al-Azhar was wrong to back Sisi. He said the institution is "penetrated" by Egypt's security agencies and pro-government thinking, and that it teaches about Sha'ria Islamic law but doesn't implement it.
Ansari said he had also grown disillusioned with the Brotherhood, which he believes buckled too easily under state pressure. He wants to join Islamic State, he said, "whether in Libya, Syria or Iraq, and then return to Egypt to take revenge on every apostate in the army and police who killed and arrested my friends."
He added: "Everybody ought to join jihad ... I learned that from my research, the Fiqh I studied ... and Islamic State fatwas."
Islam Yehya, who is studying Islamic theology at Al-Azhar university, is also angered by Sisi's security crackdown. Security forces, he said, "believe that all Al-Azhar students are terrorists or Brotherhood members. And the truth is that Al-Azhar has Brotherhood, Salafists, liberals and secularists and people who don't know anything about politics."
The tough tactics spark a deep hatred for the police, he said. "Two of my university friends travelled to Syria to join terrorist cells after they were tortured for two months in detention," said Yehya, who spoke at a rundown cafe in Cairo's Nasr City district.
Egypt's government denies allegations of human rights abuses and says the Brotherhood, Islamic State and al Qaeda pose a grave threat to Egypt.
At the same time, security sources say authorities do target universities. One police officer told Reuters that "most of Al-Azhar students are under suspicion" and are regularly monitored. Depending on what is detected, students are either subjected to further monitoring or it is stopped. "Al-Azhar students have the tendency (towards extremism) and are usually a fertile ground to be deceived into joining terrorist cells," the officer said.
Others also take a tough line. Abdul Ghani Hendi, a religious affairs adviser in the Egyptian parliament, thinks Al-Azhar should be completely restructured to allow for self-criticism. "All the thought which dominates the society is extremists' thoughts. We should confess that frankly," he said.
In April, an official at the education ministry burned books in the courtyard of a private school, saying the literature included Islamic texts that incited violence. The action sparked ridicule from Islamists and secularists alike, who pointed out that some of the burned books had nothing to do with Islam.
Nevertheless, Sisi remains committed to his drive against militancy and thinks Al-Azhar can do more to promote a moderate form of Islam. In a recent speech, he said: "We need to move faster and more effectively."